My Views

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

I am not a believer of “days”. I hate each of these so
called special days from “Fathers day” to “Mothers day”, from “Valentines day”
to “Friends day”. Few of these even eat up a whole week. I’ve never consciously
wished anyone on these day. Of course there were many awkward situations where
people wish you happy friends day out of the blue and my voice instinctively
replies. Let alone those involuntary ones, I never cared about these. But being
a shameless marketer myself, I thought I could write something on women on
their official day and at least garner a few extra views. But this is not going
to be any insincere than a losing captain wishing the winner. This one truly is
from the heart as my every other post is.

I’ll start with something I read recently. It goes like
this, “Adam was not made for Eve, Eve was made for Adam”. When I read this
first time, I could only infer one meaning out of it. But then I realized that there
can be two interpretations. Based on the one that you make, you’ll fall under
one of the two categories of people we see in this world. One kind which
believe that women are made for men – meaning women are made to be subordinates
of men, wives of men, maids of men and there are words I don’t want to use…
those of men. This kind is the one that is found in majority, domestic violence
still thrives in the society because of these people. And the worst part is,
Men are not the only ones in this kind, there a quite a lot of women who
believe that women are meant to be submissive.

How did the collective mindset of the society get afflicted
with this patriarchal disease? Only possible explanation I can come up with is
the misunderstanding of physical strength to be power. Early men went hunting
and used brute force to control animals and people. This illusion of being able
to control a women using physical power could have led him to believe that he
is superior in some kind. (I am not forgetting those brave women warriors here,
I am just keeping myself within the majority). But how come, the educated
society of today which have come to more or less believe that physical strength
is not power anymore, there are more to superiority than just being macho such
as knowledge and skills still believe in the same old dogma.

Well, men still secrete testosterone. Moreover, the society
of the present day has started believing in what they are made to believe by the
mainstream media. Everything from fairness cream ad to the treatment of women
as glam dolls in movies strikes at the root of feminism. And there are a very
few who even take it in this perspective. I will make something very clear
before I jump into this. I am not against Make-up. Actually I am one of those
boys who would give a girl a run for her cosmetics in number of layers I have
over my skin.

Back to the point - What
shocks me most is the fact that people don’t find fairness creams offensive.
Society has been so infected to interpret fairness as beauty. Why can’t I be dusky
and still be confident about it? Deepika talks in length about sex being a
women’s right but never says my colour - my right. Isn’t my skin colour my
right? With all due respect, you have the right to alter it and make it white.
But why do you see white as some high standard that you look up for? Again,
Marketing is the culprit. These people just want to sell products and they masterfully
crafted this epidemic of attraction towards the fairer skin. And the result,
the male dominated society started stalking white skinned girls and fairness
enhanced girls and the fairness in five weeks girls. I didn’t only mean
literally. Even parents looking for prospective brides for their son want the
girl to stand beside a white washed wall and camouflage herself. Women
independence starts when a girl stops giving into the society wanting her to be
a marble model. Be yourself, you’ll be one of a kind. Be not a copy of that
supermodel you saw on the last edition of femina. By restricting women to the
belief that she’s just a thing of beauty, people still dominate the world.

Aishwarya Rai is beautiful so is Mother Teresa. Beauty is
more than just looks. Don’t you think acid attacks are there just because we
consider beauty as the only thing the girl has? The whole glamour and cosmetics
industry strives to keep the society believing that girls are nothing more than
eye candies. When the world wakes up to the true side, it will be a lot better.
We’ll get to see so much of true beauty around. I don’t want to talk about the
insane attraction towards anorexia. It will then end up being a book!

The whole movie and tv industry seem to have been monopolized
by sex-starved maniacs. From evocative item songs to being outright offensive
to women in so called punch dialogues, I do not understand what they want to
express to the society. In years to come, if kids of the next generation watch
the films of our time they would be disgusted at the treatment of women. Degrading
women in every possible manner throughout a film and then shamelessly calling
it entertainment should not be taken as lightly as we take it now. We should
take a stand against this injustice towards women. Movies are part of the
history. We should not be mentioned in history as people who lived at a time
when entertainment was watching tastelessly dressed women on screen.

The true idiosyncrasy is the fact that these devils will
wear a prada and masquerade as feminists on the screens on these special days.
With their core concept against women, the fairness creams will support the education
of 5000 women from the money they get from every sachet you buy and with the spine
of the film against women the director flanked by the lead actors will stand on
stage speaking in lengths about women independence. They will talk about all
stuffs like choosing your course, going to work, getting married, having a
child etc but they’ll all miss out on this mindset that we are nurturing in the
society.

The feminine mindset – The seemingly insignificant forces
that are capable of keeping you imprisoned for a lifetime. The sense of being
empty without fair skin. The yearning to look beautiful. All these are imposed
upon you to keep you from even thinking about your higher purpose.

I churned out so much on the first kind. Let me at least
introduce you the other noble kind of people who makes the best interpretation
of the statement. “Women are made for Men” – meaning men could not be able to
exist without women.

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

The hat trick ball is always the tough one. I had applied
for taking part in the series of off-campus placement programme by Anna
University even before the Exterro interview. I couldn’t take part in the
Accenture interview which was the first in the series because it coincided with
the Exterro one. So I participated in the second drive which was by Cognizant.
It was held days before the Pongal festival. I remember calling my dad the day
before the interview and telling him about my friends coming to my home. It was
the first time and I felt a little uncomfortable about the bringing up the
topic. Surprisingly, he agreed and was more enthusiastic than I really was. Then
he asked about the interview next day. I confessed my fear of continuing to
crack all interviews coming my way even though I had just done that two times.
It was overwhelming to go on with an invincible track record. Because as Dr.
Abdul Kalam puts it, many really are waiting to tell it’s all just luck if we
fail after tasting a few consecutive success. He just told me it’s ok if I didn’t get
selected. That was a huge moral boost.

Cognizant drive was a little overrated in our college. At
least I believed so because they gave us practice to face group discussions.
And the process of the drive in itself was also a little different in the way
that GD preceded aptitude test. So maybe they were right in training us in GD. One
person to be mentioned in particular was the new dean of our department Dr.
Prabhu Ram Rajan. He was more enthusiastic than anyone else in making us all
excel in the drive. Believe it or not, enthusiasm is contagious.

Coming to the first day, we were all seated in a make-shift
auditorium. There was some formal inauguration for the event and registration
of the candidates. All this took more than half a day because there were around
2500 candidates. I met one of my old friends from IMU who also switched to
engineering along with me during the registrations. He luckily didn’t get
through the interview and I say luckily because he’s now working in Singapore
and as of today CTS hasn’t called the selected candidates yet. Everything
happens for a reason.

The group discussion started around 2.30pm if I remember
rightly. The HR was a lady who was friendly and she stated that she was bored
of technical topics and thus gave us an even boring and such an oldie topic of
love vs arranged marriage. She gave us some time to gather our thoughts and
called out names and they would then stand up and voice their opinion. I
presumed that many would support love marriages and it would be cool and unique
if I supported arranged marriages. To my surprise, arranged marriage was most
supported. Nor that I was disappointed but I didn’t expect it.

Another funny moment that happened during the GD was the
presence three Vigneshs on the same hall and we were not aware of that. When
she first called out Vignesh she read with an initial so it was not a problem. The
next time she called out Vignesh, I just stood up and spoke and sat down and
there was no one raising a problem. After a while, she called out Vignesh
Priyadarshan and I was surprised. I just told her that my turn was complete. Probably
she didn’t remember me talking or I didn’t know for what she asked me to do it
again. So I just stated in one sentence the summary of what I said earlier and
she replied, “Perfect” probably remembering my earlier comment. 3 of us were
eliminated at the end of the round and the rest of us were asked to take the
aptitude test.

The aptitude test was as usual quants, verbal etc and the
result was announced only that night. I found my name on the list and did my
usual preparation for the interview. Additionally, I also contacted one of my
friends working in Cognizant and gathered first-hand information. Equipped with
all that I went to attend the interview on a day when I should have been home
for Pongal if not for the interview. The second day was horrible. I had to wait
till 3.30pm for the interview and everything was over by 4.30pm. I helped some
candidates by telling them some programming concepts they asked once they come
to know that I was from IT background. Rest of the time, I was just doodling on
extra copies of my resume. How could I pass a whole day waiting?

I was finally called in for the technical interview. The
questions asked to me were anything but technical. First as usual was the self-introduction
and I just grabbed his attention by stating that I did my schooling in 7
different schools and went to show-off my varied course choices and my travel
experience. He was pretty impressed. He then asked about the papers I had
presented and the project that I was planning to do. He raised a few queries
about my paper. I gave convincing answers. That was all. It became the easiest
technical I had attended by then.

Finally, there was an interview with an HR. It was kid
stuff. He asked me about myself, my hobbies and location preference. He asked
me to sign on a declaration that stated that location is not at all a problem
for me. I signed because it never is going to be. The funny thing was he didn’t
know what doodling meant when I said that was one of my hobbies.

After the interview, I started left for my home and reached
home the next morning. It was a Sunday and I was on my Pongal leave. I saw the
results around noon and was really happy that I was selected. I really felt
having accomplished something because 3 in a row is never an easy stuff.

Monday, November 30, 2015

It all started the day
following the last exam of the last semester. The whole class was asked to take
part in an intensive training in order to be equipped well enough to attend the
exterro interview.

The first day was 22-12-14.
It was a Monday and we were asked to bring all our things to stay in the hostel
till the end of the training. I had my baggage ready and went to college at the
usual time. Our class was assigned a classroom at the top floor. I took the
last seat and it was fun to be at the last.

Then Parthiban took over. He
segregated the students based on whether they want java or c++. I selected Java
and we began our training in the communication lab.

The training went on for 4
days and it was followed by the interview on Friday. We all were asked to come
in blazers. The first round was an aptitude test. The java questions were
really a little tough to answer but the aptitude was fun except the time
constraint.

I was shortlisted for the
next round – the GD. There were a total of 27 students selected for the group
discussion.

The GD took place in three
sessions with 9 students for each session. I was in the second nine. And
finally my chance came; the topic given to us was web browsers. I started the
discussion and made some good points. I was sure I would be shortlisted for the
next round and I was.

The next was the technical
and I was second in order to the interview. Kumar was the first and they
interviewed him for about 10 minutes. Then I went in.

I was asked a brief introduction
about myself. The first few questions were about my interests in design and
development. They probed me to find out my real interest whether it was design
or development. I told them about the flash applications.

Then they went on to ask about SSL which I
managed to give a short answer. They told me that they were tempted to ask that
question because of my interest in web technology. I said that by web
technology I just meant html and stuffs.

Then they asked about get
and post methods to which I gave a fairly good answer. The next question was on
interfaces. I gave my best explanation. And finally they came to this question
which they stated was a tricky one. If given an offer immediately would I
choose Exterro or Aspire Systems?

I said I would choose
Exterro stating my interest in a product based company. That was the end of my
technical interview.

After the technical
interview, 7 candidates were shortlisted to do a task from the company in 3
days. I was one among them. The task was to develop a Java web application
which involved servlets, java script, css and sql.

We were given 3 days to
complete the task and I was very sure of completing the task in 2 days and
dedicating the entire third day for decorating my work. But it was easier said.
Learning the basics of servlets and JSP took the whole duration and only when
we were close to the deadline, we literally started our project.

We should have submitted the
task by 6.00 pm and I was coding at full speed at the last hour. I had all the
functionalities of one module ready but not the other one. Fortunately we were
all given an extension till the end of that day. That meant an additional 6
hours of oxygen.

I completed my task by about
08.00 pm. Well, that was about 2 hours late but my work was complete at least.
We all sent the task by mail at about 11.30 pm.

Only after two days on the
New Year day, I came to know that I was shortlisted for the next round along
with 3 others. Thus I learnt that the three rounds of shortlisting and the
daunting task was not all.

On 02.01.15, the day after
the New Year we four were asked to come to the Tidel Park, at Exterro R&D
Coimbatore for the second set of rounds of the Interview Process.

The start was great. It was
an early day and I woke up at 04.00 am and got ready by 04.30 when Nantha Kumar
came to my room. He, his brother and me were riding his bike to the Trichengode
bus stand. Then took place the most interesting part of the journey.

The fuel got empty when we
were not even a mile away from where we started. A man who passed us advised us
to buy a liter of fuel from a local vendor and travel till the next fuel
station. But Nantha didn’t heed him and wanted to try his luck more. He just
put the vehicle down on the road and waited for the last drops of fuel to enter
the engine.

After about 5 minutes, he
started the bike again and we were able to reach our college 3 km away from my
room and we had to go another mile to reach the fuel station. We just pushed
the bike and were walking on the road at about 04.45 am early in the morning
when the whole place was peacefully sleeping. The worst part was I started
sweating due to the high physical activity. Thankfully, the atmosphere was
chill and I was not sweating too much. Looks does matter after all!

The drama was finally over,
when his brother got the bike started and he went ahead of us to reach the fuel
station. He filled it and took us to the Tiruchengode Bus Stand. We were there
at about 5.00am. We took a bus to Erode and then from there to Coimbatore.

Finally we reached Tidel
Park at about 08.00 am. We were not let inside by the watchmen as we were not
holding any ID cards. We called Exterro and they asked the watchmen to let us
inside for the Interview and we all were asked to wait in the food court till
09.00am.

We were inside the company
at about 09.30 am and the interview process started. One of us was called for
the technical interview and I took the chance because I hated to wait long. I
went in. The interviewer was the same one I had met in the technical round at
college earlier. He asked me about the task and what I learnt out of it.

I gave a convincing answer
and mentioned that I learnt JSP, servlet etc to which he said the use of JSP is
not advisable because of the number of times of compilation required for
displaying JSP pages. Then he gave me his laptop and asked me to code a java
servlet to print the current date and time. He had already opened the eclipse
JDK for me and I could see my task in the tabs. I just came up with some wild
guesses on the name of the function. Even though I couldn’t decide on the right
one over the choices provided by the drop down, he helped me with the one he
expected.

He then asked me to code a
program that gets the users name on one page and prints it with a “hi” on the
next one. That was kid stuff. He then asked me a few questions regarding some
concepts in java servlets. I was much new to java servlets and he knew that so
he was pretty ok with the rather unclear answers that I gave. And finally he
asked the advantages of using java servlets instead of JSP for which I don’t
remember giving a sharp answer either. Nevertheless, he told me the right
answer. I promptly said that I didn’t know it. And the interview was over just
like that.

The next round was with the
HR, Mr. Karthik Subramaniam. His interview was more personal. He just got me to
tell about my family background and about my story of having ended up in a college
in salem after completing schooling in Chennai. I also told him about the CEED
exam that I had taken and I wouldn’t be able to join the company if I ever got
a chance to do higher studies in IIT. He agreed and asked me to wait for the
next round.

After lunch at the IT park’s
food court, I was called in for the next round of interview with another HR. He
also had some usual set of ice breaking questions like brief introductions and
stuffs like that but he was quite cordial. He then asked me to rate myself on a
scale of 1-10 on my java knowledge. I said 8. And then he came up with a really
good question. He asked,”So you know the object oriented concepts?”. I nodded.
He continued,”Just tell me which one of those concepts is used in the
system.out.println statement.” That looks simple on the surface but I could not
cut through it. I just tried my luck,”Inheritance??”. He didn’t say yes or no
but just asked me how. That how made me think like maybe I was right. I couldn’t
have been more wrong. I just gave a weird justification for my answer. He just
smiled and said, “It’s polymorphism”. Looking at my puzzled face he went on, “because
the println function works for int or a string or a character etc”. That’s when
I deduced that he has got some really strong programming basics and I shouldn’t
take HRs lightly. He then asked, “still you rate yourself at 8?”. But I didn’t give
in. I retorted,”Sir, Maybe I didn’t know the OOPs concept behind the println statement
but that is not going to stop me from using those functions efficiently in my
programs.”. He smiled in approval.

He went on to ask about my short
term and long term goals for which I gave fairly good answers. And he also asked how many years I would commit to Exterro
if I am selected. I don’t know why I was that miserly, I just said 1. That too
with a hesitation. But that didn’t make any difference.

The final round was with the
Executive Director of India operations. She was portrayed to be someone so
strict and I was a little nervous. But frankly, she didn’t seem so and was very
cordial when she interviewed me. She just asked me when would I get my IIT
results and I replied that by January 15. She told me that she wanted to give
me an internship immediately but as I was also having other plans, she asked me
to convey my result once I get it.

PS: Things took wild turns
after that and eventually I didn’t get to work there even though my result was
not as I expected it to be. Now, even my decision of not taking the offer
immediately seems to be the best possible because I got to experience so many
things just because I was free.

Sunday, November 29, 2015

This is the first of the series of posts on the interviews I have attended. Hope you enjoy reading it
I must first confess that I was not really very interested in attending the interview. It wouldn’t be all false if I said I just attended the interview so that I could skip classes. It was about a week or two past Diwali and I wore my Diwali dress, an ultra-formal solid blue shirt and my favourite pants to the off-campus held at Senguthar College, Erode. So uninterested was I that, I even took the photocopies of the required documents only on the day of the interview. The first round was an aptitude test. It was done in shifts because there were around 3000 candidates taking the exam. So the guys who came first ended up finishing the test earlier. I reached the venue a little later, due to which I had to take the test in the second shift only. That was not the big deal, I was particularly disappointed because only after reaching the venue, I came to know that the process is of two days and the face to face interview would take place only on the second day. If I had known that beforehand, I wouldn’t have worn my blue shirt on the first day. Anyway, who cares? I actually wore the same dress both days. It’s not that that shirt was my lucky charm or something, but I have always worn the same outfit for all my interviews and I have ended up getting selected in every one of them.
I was really confident of cracking the aptitude test and obviously I cracked it and was called for the successive rounds on the next day along with Balaji and few others from our college. This time, we were taken to the college in the institution bus and the journey was so dizzying partly because I hadn’t had breakfast and also because Balaji made me read something from my mobile while traveling. Reading while traveling in buses always makes me dizzy. So when I reached the venue, I was not all well but as little a snack as a single egg puffs made it all vanish and I was refreshed. So breakfast had been the main culprit.
The preparation I did for the day was a single glance over all the java concepts of which I had already made a ready reckoner that can be used instantly. This particular notebook of mine had been very helpful in cracking the technical rounds. I am not so good at technical but very good at selling what I am good at! I’ll come to it while discussing my interview. And there is another strange thing that I always did the day before interviews and paper presentations – watching one of my all-time favourite movies, The Social Network. I recommend it strongly to listen to music or watch movies, not any particular movie but anything that pumps up your adrenaline before the big day. It’s always good to go with a lot of spirit. It never fails to help you.
But if you ask me how was I able to crack technical interviews just with a single glance before attending them, my answer would be this very simple thing - The last minute binging and last day efforts never work, it is the consistent learning discipline of months that is refreshed in minutes. But don’t be discouraged, by putting in extra efforts things can be achieved in a pretty short time too.
Coming back to the crux – we were called inside an auditorium sort of a room where we were given programs to solve. There was an instructor, who gave questions individually to each candidate. They just gave whatever that came to their minds. So, it involved a little bit of luck too. My first question was to code a pattern involving *’s and A’s. It was not quite difficult, but I took a little time as I found that there was no time constraint and finally solved it. The second question was actually my trump card. He might have thought it to be a rather difficult question but I found it absolutely easy thanks to Balaji for having come up with the discussion on the same question earlier. It was the permutations of a three letter word, say ‘cat’. I solved it in no time and he was impressed. And finally, he asked me to code a program to eliminate extra spaces. Unlike the earlier answers, I did this in java. He then asked me which department was I from and promoted me to the next level of the technical interview.
The level two of the technical interview began in a cordial way where a little over middle-aged person who I assume to be a senior developer asked me to take a seat and sat beside me. First, he asked me about classes and objects to which I gave fairly good answers. Then he asked me to draw a class diagram for an employee payroll. That was kid stuff actually and I did it with no glitch. And the final and only coding question in this round was to code a program to remove trailing and leading spaces. I came up with an elegant solution involving while loop and before I even completed the code, he asked me to go to the next level. While I was ready to get up, he suddenly said, “Ok, just tell me what virtual classes are”. This was quite surprising to me not only because he asked me that after short-listing me for the next level, but also because this was the only concept we discussed while traveling and this was the one that I read in my mobile while traveling which eventually made me dizzy. But Balaji has this amazing instinct of rightly predicting probable questions that benefited me particularly that time. So no wonder, I answered him and retained my position in the next level. (But I don’t remember so well whether I was right and sharp but thankfully, he was also not very attentive to my answer to that question. Maybe he had already made up his mind.)
In the next level, I was asked to give two write-ups. First one, on the generic topic of career aspirations and as the second one, I was asked to write a one-page essay on my favourite film because I had mentioned watching films as one of my hobbies. The first one I wrote something usual but for the second one I had to take some time deciding which movie to write about. It’s the side effect of watching too many movies. But Social network came to my rescue and I wrote about it and what it means to me.
They asked me to break for lunch and come back at 2’O clock for the HR interview. I was naturally elated. Only when I went outside I came to know that Balaji had also been selected for the HR interview. The joy was doubled now. Then we were four of us, Balaji, another friend Suresh Krishnan who unluckily or rather luckily because he got better chances later, couldn’t get past the first technical round because of being on the wrong side of luck (he was asked to implement a doubly linked list), a staff from our college Mr. Sathiya Kumar and me. We all had lunch together in the canteen. The funniest part was Sathiya Kumar sir suddenly started talking to me with a new respect and sorry to disappoint you, it was not for getting into the final round of the interview but was because he had gone through my profile and found me a little older than he expected.
Back to the place of interview with a lot of spirit. Balaji introduced me to another guy who he said was from our place and I thought he was from tiruchengode maybe. Surprisingly the guy Manu Mathew, was from Nagercoil. It really was cool to meet someone who was studying in my hometown on a special day – it was not a special day just because I had an interview, November 1 is a local holiday in our place because it was the day on which we were integrated with Tamilnadu from Kerala. I think, it’s called the Founder’s day or something in our place.
Cutting short the blabber, finally there were 4 of us facing the interview, Balaji, Manu Mathew, Pavithra, a girl from IRTT and I. We were all seated in a makeshift kind of an interview room which might have been the placement officer’s cabin. Balaji was called in first. And it took about 20 minutes for him to come out. The rest of us were silently looking at each other not knowing what to expect in the interview. Manu asked me to tell about some new technologies. I told him about quantum computing which I came across in digit magazine. Pavithra talked about how she went till the final round of some company, Tech Mahindra if I remember correctly. After some small talks it was complete silence in the waiting room and my body started feeling the chill in the air. No, it’s not the fear but the AC. Beyond a certain point the AC became too much for me. I was trying all techniques within the confines of a decent social behavior to keep myself warm like rubbing my palms, shrinking myself etc… Still it was so cool and it was taking a toll on me as we were called in the alphabetical order. That was the only con of having a name that starts with a letter near the very end of the alphabets.
Thank god, before I started shivering Pavithra came out of the interview. I was the only one left and the interviewer took a little time in calling me in. The excitation took over the shiver. He finally called me in. He introduced himself stating his name and position in the company. I have this bad habit of not catching the name of people when they first tell them to me. Naturally I didn’t catch his name but then I came to know him to be Mr. Dinesh, HR – Aspire Systems. He was friendly and asked me for a self-introduction. I usually don’t have a generic self-introduction, so I just started telling about myself from my school days. I said about how I used to shift from one school to another in a matter of few years and how ended up studying in 7 schools. That averages to a school per 2 years. Then I told him about my short stint in marine studies and gave him a little background on why chose computer science etc. He didn’t ask me anything particularly difficult to answer. The interview actually changed course after that.
He then asked me what I had learnt from my days at marine institute. I told him about the exercise regime we follow there and the discipline that was imparted to us. I told him about the sheer strength of character imparted by being entrusted with the responsibility of a multi-million dollar worth of cargo and ship at a very young age. The next question was to state an interesting concept that I learnt there. I told him about the “day’s work” concept. It actually is about maintaining track of the ship’s passage over a day. Everything such as the latitude and longitude of the ship’s positions are marked over 24 hours and it is used to check whether we are on the correct course. So the interview was really more related to marine than to computer science.
And the interview was over finally. Waiting for the results of an interview made me far more anxious than the interview itself. It took 2-3 hours for us to know the results. Finally, all four of us were selected plus another girl from the host college. They congratulated all of us. Balaji and I being from the same college made us really special and it was more special because Balaji was actually asked to write about the best moment in life for the second essay and he had given an account of our winning the first prize in a paper presentation competition in our very first attempt and that too on his birthday. So the HR had an idea of our friendship. He commented that this would be another such day. It truly was!
P.S: Unfortunately, I couldn’t accept their offer because of the three year bond associated with it. I contemplated a lot on taking the offer despite the bond but I just couldn’t do it. I felt like 3 years was too much for me to be spent on a same place. I may be out of marine life but the traveller in me never died.
I wish to have all the others who attended the interview with me – Balaji, Manu and Pavithra to share their own account of the interview soon. Let’s hope they do me the favour.

Saturday, June 20, 2015

I didn't want to skip a day of blogging just because I'm travelling. If I did then there is no use of having a smartphone after all.
So what will I blog about today - about the very train in which travelling. While I was travelling in the about 2 months back to attend my final semester exams I had thought that could be my last journey on that train. But it turned out that I have travelled by the same train twice after that. And both these times I travelled a longer distance than I used to while in college. So it's just very ironical that I'm travelling by the same train today.

Friday, June 19, 2015

Our college had a decent gym facility to feed the fitness freaks inside us. College going boys usually would have an interest towards building their bodies. May be it was the raging hormones or the natural intention to attract girls or whatever be the reason, being fit always felt great. Until about one month since the gym was opened, so many guys were thronging it in a “welcome attraction”. Well the welcome attraction soon faded away and the gym master became the only one visiting the gym regularly.
Soon, My friends Suresh Krishan, Madhan (Maddy Mathan @ facebook) and I started giving company to the gym master at least with our regular visits to gym. We used to do some random exercises and we felt our muscles growing day by day. The one thing that we could not have at home was the all-round mirror arrangement in the gym. We could just look our toned body reflected and this added to the high that we got from working out.
As our exercise routine was starting to become more mundane of sorts, some greatly interested guys like Dinesh and Giri joined with us. They showed greater endurance and inspired us to do more repetition of the exercises we usually would be doing. This new surge in work our naturally increased our interest in going to train daily. Soon the gym master also gave some work out training regimes to follow that made the work out sessions a lot more interesting and exciting.
Every single day we felt our muscles bulging. It was not just about spending an hour after college sweating out for calorie loss and body building but is was also such a good relaxation method. It gifted me a good sleep and lot of energy to concentrate during the day time. I always spoke about the advantages of going to gym and encouraged many of my friends into developing a habit of working out regularly.
We used to call ourselves “the gym boys” to proudly proclaim that we trained and stayed fit. It was not the exercises alone, we used to hang-out together after college hours. We used to treat each other with fast foods, noodles, mushroom fries and so much more. So many memories still remain fresh when I start thinking of the time I spent at the gym.
Quite obviously, exercising was the only physical activity that we ever had in our whole college life except the few small walks between the college and bus stop and of course between classes and labs or canteen. The workouts never made us the next Hrithik Roshans but it at least made us feel good about ourselves, know the limits of our body and the reserve of our stamina. There is nothing equal to the pleasure of full exhaustion after a heavy workout session. We acquired greater joy in doing an extra repetition of a high intensity training. Each and every day we felt our strengths grow as we were able to do more reps. So that kept us all alive and awesome.
More awesome feelings coming soon…